CEDIA: Harman Kardon's New Flagship Receiver

Harman Kardon took the wraps off its new flagship receiver, the AVR-7550HD. My photo (at right) is pretty poor, but in fact there's not much to see. This beauty has a completely stealth front panel, with a cool lighted, translucent volume knob. (There are some conventional controls under a flip panel). The minimalist design has soft rounded corners, gloss-black and dark-graphite lower panel, and soft-white illumination.

In addition to the AVR-7550HD flagship, HK also showed its new AVR-3550HD 7.1-channel receiver. It also has HDMI 1.3a capability, Faroujda DCDi Cinema processing and upscaling, and Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio capability. Power is 7 x 75 watts (8 ohms).

The Harman Kardon AVR 7550HD 7.2-channel audio/video receiver will be available in January 2009 at a suggested retail price of $2,799. The AVR 3550HD will be available in October 2008 at $1,199 suggested retail. -Ken C. Pohlmann